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April 4, 2011

[Cricket, of course, is only a sport, and an obscure one for much of the world, yet it is now providing a respite from what has become known as India’s “season of scams.” In this country of 1.2 billion people, the national cricket team is treated like a group of rock stars and regarded by some as a metaphor for the country as a whole: young, increasingly confident and slowly moving forward, if sometimes tripping itself in the process.]

MUMBAI, India — India has had plenty of downbeat news in recent months: a litany of tawdry scandals, an unexpected sharp decline in foreign investment, the ineffectiveness of a bickering Parliament. A nation once brimming with confidence and global aspirations has seemed to stumble.

Then, on Saturday night, India won the World Cup in cricket, a sport that permeates life here the way monsoon rains seep into the soil. When the winning shot by the Indian captain, M. S. Dhoni, sailed upward into the lights of Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Indians erupted in delirious celebration. Fireworks exploded in city after city and village after village, as throngs of people poured into the streets, beating drums, shouting and cheering.

“There is a national kind of mood, or zeitgeist, that cricket brings in,” said Anand Mahindra, managing director of one of India’s largest business conglomerates, Mahindra & Mahindra. “Can it have a disproportionate impact on people’s sense of self and general well-being and confidence? I think yes.”

Cricket, of course, is only a sport, and an obscure one for much of the world, yet it is now providing a respite from what has become known as India’s “season of scams.” In this country of 1.2 billion people, the national cricket team is treated like a group of rock stars and regarded by some as a metaphor for the country as a whole: young, increasingly confident and slowly moving forward, if sometimes tripping itself in the process.

The victory over Sri Lanka, India’s second World Cup win over all and its first since 1983, is especially gratifying for Indian fans because the national team has failed to win big matches in recent years, even though it was regarded as one of the world’s best teams. On Sunday morning, Indian newspapers carried euphoric headlines. “The World at Our Feet,” shouted The Times of India, the country’s biggest English-language daily. “Windia,” proclaimed The Indian Express.

Cricket has an enormous following on the Indian subcontinent, as well as in England, Australia, South Africa and the West Indies. Television ratings for the final match were not yet available Sunday, but data from recent matches showed that a majority of India’s 138 million television households tuned into the tournament, with many tens of millions watching from elsewhere in the world.

In India’s biggest cities, fans congregated around outdoor screens or watched in restaurants and coffee shops. During key Indian matches, pilots on some domestic flights offered midair updates on the score. One 20-year-old model with a flair for self-promotion asked permission to perform a striptease for the team, calling it her patriotic duty. On Sunday, India’s politicians hailed the team, with the chief minister of Delhi announcing cash bonuses for Mr. Dhoni, the team captain, and the four team members from Delhi.

Only six months ago, India suffered embarrassment at another sporting event, the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. The country’s reputation was marred by reports of corruption in the planning of those games, poor management of the construction of new arenas and an athletes’ village in which rooms were soiled by human waste. Even as Indian athletes later performed well in competitions, India’s politicians and bureaucrats were heavily criticized.

Then India was rocked by a telecommunications scandal over the allocation of cellphone licenses, as a government auditor concluded that the government might have lost about $40 billion in fees because officials gave licenses to favored bidders at bargain prices. On Saturday, as the cricket match was under way in Mumbai, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation filed charges against a former communications minister, his aides and several high-profile business executives in that case. They were accused of cheating, forgery and corruption.

“Ever since the Commonwealth Games, it has been one bit of bad news after another,” said Jayaditya Gupta, executive editor of ESPN Cricinfo, a popular cricket Web site. “We have been thrown up in front of the world as a nation of corruption.”

The World Cup victory, he added, was “a completely honest achievement.”

In India, cricket is no longer regarded as a leisurely sport of gentlemen in white trousers but has instead become a sexy symbol of the “new” India. The stars of the Indian team are wealthy and ubiquitous. They are covered feverishly in the news media and endorse countless products. India Today, a weekly magazine, recently listed India’s 50 most powerful people, placing the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, at the top. But ranked second, ahead of several billionaires, was the country’s most revered cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar. Mr. Dhoni was ranked No. 15.

Mr. Dhoni comes from one of India’s poorest regions, and his rags-to-riches story embodies the hopes of many Indians on the margins. After the match, Mr. Dhoni and other players said they were inspired to win for Mr. Tendulkar, a batter who has hit more runs than any player in the sport’s history and is often referred to in India as simply “God.” This is expected to be his last World Cup.

“It was a very strong team unit,” Mr. Gupta said, contrasting it with India’s bitterly fractious and destructive politics in recent months. “We seem to be pulling in so many different directions. There is no unanimity. There is so much bitterness and so much division.”

Cricket is hardly immune from the stain of malfeasance. India’s professional league, which plays a shorter, flashier version of the game, experienced a major scandal last year over the bidding for new teams. The sport has often been rocked by allegations of corruption, some proven and many not, in which players throw games or agree to commit a flagrant error in exchange for cash.

Even Saturday night, e-mails were making the rounds in India charging that the World Cup match was fixed by bookies. Similar accusations were made after India beat Pakistan in a politically charged semifinal last Wednesday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India had invited his Pakistani counterpart, Yousaf Raza Gilani, to join him in the stands for that match.

But as India awoke on Sunday, there was joy, a salve to a bitter political season. Even Sonia Gandhi, the president of the governing Indian National Congress Party, stepped into the streets of New Delhi to celebrate — perhaps not only the victory but the distraction it offered.

“Sachin Tendulkar and company has done Dr. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi a huge favor,” said Ramachandra Guha, a historian and authority on cricket, “by redirecting popular sentiment away from corruption and toward cricket.”

[The announcement, coming a day after Tepco found irradiated water leaking into the sea from a crack in a storage pit at the unit 4 reactor, stoked fears about what other surprises lie in wait for emergency workers. Efforts to stem the leaking water, first by pouring cement into the crack and then a water-absorbent polymer, have been unsuccessful, government officials said.]

TOKYO — The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could continue to release dangerous radiation into the air for several months, Japanese officials said Sunday, acknowledging their painstakingly slow progress in the battle to regain control of the badly damaged facility.

Goshi Hosono, a special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, first raised the specter of a months-long stabilization process during an interview with Fuji television. The government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, then confirmed the time frame at a news conference.

Edano told reporters that the government will continue to examine alternative emergency measures “to shorten that period,” but he conceded that they “may not be feasible.”

The public disclosure that authorities were viewing the fight in a window of months, not days or weeks, illustrated the complex challenges and uncertain nature of the massive operation, now in its fourth week, to repair the crippled power plant. As if to underscore the likelihood that the emergency repair job will be replete with surprises, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced that it had retrieved the bodies of two workers who had gone missing March 11.

Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, found Wednesday in the basement of the No. 4 reactor, were killed by the massive earthquake and tsunamithat struck the country that day, the company said, not by the subsequent release of radiation. They worked in the operation management division and were doing routine checks of the power plant when the quake struck, company officials said.

The officials said they waited five days to publicly announce the deaths at the request of family members, who sought privacy.

“We feel extreme remorse about losing our young employees,” Tepco said in a statement. “We promise that we will never repeat this tragedy.”

The announcement, coming a day after Tepco found irradiated water leaking into the sea from a crack in a storage pit at the unit 4 reactor, stoked fears about what other surprises lie in wait for emergency workers. Efforts to stem the leaking water, first by pouring cement into the crack and then a water-absorbent polymer, have been unsuccessful, government officials said.

Asked about the ongoing problems, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency insisted there has been “a degree of progress.”

“But there may be challenges we deal with for several weeks and others for several months and others that take even longer,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy director general for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which is monitoring Tepco.

The death toll from the March 11 disaster rose to 12,020, with an additional 15,512 missing and 165,282 living in shelters, government officials said. An intensive three-day military operation to find bodies concluded Sunday after finding 77, according to news reports.

Tepco and the government have been criticized by outside experts, the media and the public for not disclosing information in a timely, transparent manner. In response, the government has held several news conferences each day, including one for foreign reporters.

Armed with complex charts, government ministers from several agencies attempt to explain the incremental progress being made. But time and again, the small success stories have been overshadowed by more shocking revelations that steal the headlines and suggest the government has yet to establish the upper hand at the power plant.

One day last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it had found radiation in quantities it considered high enough to warrant evacuation outside the government’s 12-mile evacuation zone around the Daiichi plant. Another day, Tepco announced it had made a major error in reporting the radiation levels in water at the plant.

Deep skepticism has set in among reporters. They pressed the government panel Sunday evening, asking why the discovery of the dead workers had not been announced last week and why top elected officials and Tepco executives were not appearing at the briefings.

“I will let the elected officials know of your concerns,” a government spokesman replied, without elaborating.